Chapter Seven
The bell of Sainte-Mérance had counted down the early hours, and somewhere after the fifth stroke Elizabeth had given up on sleep altogether, made herself some tea, and settled into the powder-blue bergère by the window.
Every time she’d closed her eyes she was back in the shadows at the quai, the first shot, then the second, as he’d buckled against the parapet, his hand pressed to his side.
And then, he’d simply vanished.
She’d been so certain it was Jonathan.
Certain enough to follow him from the Castellane to the Pont Neuf in an evening gown and her best Perugias.
She thought she’d known him well enough that a passing resemblance shouldn’t have fooled her for a moment.
And yet it had.
Jonathan had been Oliver’s best man, and she one of Clemmi’s bridesmaids. Was that all it had taken? Seeing Clemmi and Oliver again, and her mind had simply conjured him?
Then there was Oliver. He’d claimed he needed a word with de Massenet’s chef de cabinet, and that their meeting would likely take some hours. Yet scarcely twenty-minutes later he’d been standing in the darkness, barely a hundred yards from the bridge.
And his claim about taking a walk to clear his head – if that were the case, why had the Daimler been waiting at the arcades?
Elizabeth raised the cup to her lips and grimaced before setting it down on the windowsill.
She rose from the bergère, collecting her gloves and handbag from the dressing table as she crossed the bedroom and slipped through the door.
The newsboys would be out with the morning editions by now. If a man had been pulled from the Seine in the night, somebody would have printed it – and she’d rather know before she sat down to Clemmi’s interrogation over the breakfast table about last night’s fashion parade.
She eased the front door shut and considered the lift. One press of the button and the cage would clank and groan its way down, waking half the building before it ever reached the lobby.
She took the stairs instead, one hand on the iron rail as she wound down through the floors, and let herself out onto the rue de Louvencourt.
Paris at this hour was a different city entirely.
Elizabeth pulled on her gloves as she made her way beneath the plane trees, watching her feet where the roots had lifted the kerbstones. Outside number eighteen a concierge knelt at her step with brushes and pail, the water running down into the gutter.
She should have gone to the police last night, whatever Oliver had said. Saying nothing had sat badly with her then, and it sat no better now.
Further along, a milk cart stood at the kerb, the horse shifting in its traces while the boy swung his churns down two at a time, calling something over his shoulder to a girl who took not the slightest notice of him.
A newsboy rounded the corner, canvas bag slung across his chest. “Le plan Dawes! Les Américains à Paris!”
Nothing about a shooting on the Pont Neuf? Perhaps there was something inside?
Elizabeth raised her hand, and he pulled a copy of Le Figaro from his bag, exchanging it for the coin in her palm. “Merci, madame!” He touched his cap and darted on down the street, his cry thinning behind her.
Boulangerie Fournier was the only shop on the street with its windows lit, a woman in a white cap laying out the first trays of the morning behind the glass – croissants, brioches, pains au chocolat still shining from the oven.
She’d eaten nothing since yesterday’s lunch; supper at the soirée had gone the way of Maggie’s invitation to Le Chat Qui Dort.
She pushed the door open, the bell chiming her arrival.
“Bonjour, madame.”
“Bonjour.” Elizabeth’s gaze went to the trays behind the counter. “Deux pains au chocolat, s’il vous pla?t, et deux croissants.”
The woman reached for a paper bag. “You are staying with Madame Sterling, non?”
Elizabeth paused. “Oui, that’s correct, yes.”
The woman’s face brightened. She added two more croissants to the bag without being asked, then took a pain suisse from the tray in the window, wrapped it separately in paper, and pressed it across the counter. “Pour Madame Sterling. For the bébé.”
“C’est très gentil. Merci beaucoup.”
“De rien.” She waved the coins away, then reconsidered and accepted them with a shrug. “Au revoir, madame.”
The bell sounded behind her as she stepped out onto the pavement and made her way back along the street to Clemmi’s apartment.
The smell of the pastries followed her up the stairwell. She’d barely reached the top step when the apartment door swung open and Oliver stepped out, hat in one hand, his despatch case in the other.
He stopped dead at the sight of her, then reached back and drew the door closed behind him.
“Elizabeth.” He kept his voice low. “You’re out and about early.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” She crossed the landing towards him. “And I’m glad I’ve caught you. I’d like a word before you leave … about last night. I think I should speak to the police.”
His gaze went to his wristwatch, then back to her. “To be honest with you – I’m not sure there’s a great deal to tell them.”
“A man was shot last night, Oliver. I saw it with my own eyes. And you’re acting as if it were nothing.”
“I’m not trying to dismiss what you saw or trivialise what happened, but it was dark, there was a lot of confusion and it would be perfectly easy to–”
“How do you explain the gunshots? You were there; you must have heard them.”
“The Americans put on a fireworks display at the Castellane last night, which you’d have seen if you hadn’t gone running off when you did. The noise could easily have been mistaken for shots.”
“I still think I should speak to them.”
“Tell you what.” Oliver checked his wristwatch again. “Leave it with me and I’ll speak to the commissaire personally and make sure your account is properly noted. You have my word.”
“Thank you, Oliver, I’d appreciate that.”
He reached back and pressed down on the handle, pushing the door open for her to pass. “Best not mention any of this to Clemmi. All this talk of shootings, in her condition…”
“Of course.”
Elizabeth stepped into the entrance hall and eased the door shut behind her as Oliver’s footsteps faded down the stairwell.
The rich aroma of coffee filled the passage as she made her way to the dining room. Sylvie glanced up from setting the breakfast table.
“Milady! You are up early.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” Elizabeth handed her the paper bag. “From Madame Fournier.”
Sylvie peered inside. “A pain suisse!” A smile spread across her face. “Oh, Madame will be happy this morning.”
She set the bag on her tray. “Some tea, milady?”
“Please, Sylvie.”
Sylvie lifted the tray and disappeared towards the kitchen.
Elizabeth settled into the chair at the far end of the table and unfolded her copy of Le Figaro.
The front page gave her the Dawes Plan, a speech in the Chamber, the American delegation photographed on the steps of the Quai d’Orsay.
She turned the page. A fire in a warehouse at Saint-Denis.
A tram accident on the Boulevard Voltaire.
A jeweller robbed in the Marais. She turned another, then another.
“Votre thé, milady.” Sylvie returned and set down the teapot, cup and saucer, and a small jug of milk, then a plate with the croissants and pains au chocolat arranged in a neat fan. “The pain suisse I will keep for Madame.”
“Merci, Sylvie.”
Elizabeth lifted the teapot and filled her cup, her eyes still moving down the columns.
Half the newspaper gone, and not a single line about the Pont Neuf.
A tram accident warranted three paragraphs, yet gunshots on the oldest bridge in Paris hadn’t earned so much as a mention?
She reached for a croissant and turned another page.
The back page gave her nothing but the racing at Longchamp.
She folded the paper and sank back into her chair.
Not a line. Not a single word about shots fired on the Pont Neuf, about the police swarming over the bridge, or a man going into the Seine – and yet Paris this morning was carrying on as though none of it had happened.
The trouble was, she was a stranger here.
No contacts, no connections, not so much as a name at the préfecture.
And the one man who had all three had spent the morning persuading her she’d seen nothing at all.
She might not have any connections or influence here … but she knew a woman who did.